"The benefits to making smaller games with budgets of $1-2 million compared to $40-50 million are huge," said Schafer. "With a triple-A game, when there’s so much money invested, the risks for a publisher are huge. The more money you ask for from an investor, the more that you have to give up. No matter where in the world your publisher is based, they will remove features that could potentially alienate any users when the stakes are so high." "This can be deeply frustrating if you are interested in making games that aren’t necessarily universal but are more daring or experimental," he added. "Moreover, the chances of withholding IP rights are very small on such large projects. While publishers will still try to take your IP rights on smaller titles, you’re more likely to be able to hang onto them."